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'Vibes Made Man Kill... and Confess, Police Say

For Larme Price, the man who the police say has confessed to four unprovoked killings in Brooklyn and Queens, life was increasingly controlled by vibes.

There were the bad vibes, investigators said, that told him whom to shoot dead. There were the cars on the street whose vibrations told him where to go. But there were also, the police said he told them, the good vibes. He felt them when he presented himself on Friday night at the 77th Precinct station house and met Tony Viggiani.

Detective Viggiani, Mr. Price apparently told the police later, seemed like someone he could trust. Someone who could help him.

And that, said Lt. John Cornicello, a key member of the task force searching for the man initially known as the Saturday Shooter, was what led to a highly unusual confession that came not in an interrogation room, in front of a video camera, but over a cellphone, from a man walking free, if tearfully, on the streets of Crown Heights.

''In all the intensity of these situations, it always ends up sounding like the guy came in and gave himself up,'' Lieutenant Cornicello said. ''But he would have walked out and continued doing what he was doing if he wasn't treated in a certain way.''

Yesterday, Mr. Price was arraigned on six counts of murder and one of attempted murder. He was ordered held without bail under a suicide watch. The police believe that he killed four people, but that two of the killings were committed during robberies, warranting the extra murder counts.

On Friday, Mr. Price did walk out of the precinct house, after telling Detective Viggiani and Detective Jeannie Valentin, members of the Brooklyn North Homicide Squad, that the person behind the shooting was a man called ''Dog.''

He left behind his cellphone number -- and two detectives with a hunch that there was no such person as ''Dog.''

The next day, Detective Viggiani called Mr. Price, asking for more help. That is when Mr. Price broke down, saying, ''I'm the guy you're looking for,'' according to Lieutenant Cornicello.

Detective Viggiani, who is also a hostage negotiator, kept Mr. Price on the line for at least 10 minutes, while he and Detective Valentin jumped into a car and sped to meet him in front of his parents' apartment on Eastern Parkway.

The investigators soon had Mr. Price talking about why he had killed four shopkeepers, all immigrants, since Feb. 8, Lieutenant Cornicello said. There had been much speculation over the gunman's motivation: Did he hate people he perceived as foreigners? Was his blood lust, investigators mused, the result of all-night drug binges?

On Sunday, the police said that Mr. Price had claimed he wanted to kill Arabs in revenge for the Sept. 11 attacks. But only one of the men he shot was of Middle Eastern origin.

''As much as he says he had something against Middle Eastern people, he actually -- he hated everybody,'' Lieutenant Cornicello said. ''He expressed feelings against a lot of different people during this interview,'' he said, adding, ''He felt he was patriotic. He was a patriotic killer. He wanted to enlist in the Army.''

Lieutenant Cornicello said Mr. Price did not seem to have planned his killings. ''He went in to buy a pack of gum, and he got 'bad vibes.' He mentioned that he was in several stores that he got bad vibes, but he didn't have the gun. He would go back but the store would be closed, or he wouldn't be able to get in.''

Mr. Price also told the police that he had been using PCP, a powerful narcotic whose effects include delusions, paranoia and, sometimes, a feeling of invincibility.

Detectives believe they also solved the mystery of how Mr. Price had traveled from Crown Heights to Ozone Park to Mill Basin to Bedford-Stuyvesant, the neighborhoods where the slayings took place: They found a baseball cap, the one the suspect had been wearing in surveillance video tapes, in the trunk of his father's Lexus.

They were still trying yesterday to tie up one loose end. They were looking for the .40-caliber pistol used in three of the shootings, which they said Mr. Price claimed to have sold.

On Sunday, Mr. Price's mother, Leatha Price, told reporters that her son had a history of drug abuse and mental health problems, and that Sept. 11 had been particularly hard on him. She said she had tried to get him medical help, but hospitals had released him.

Hospital records show that Mr. Price was treated at Kings County Hospital Center on Oct. 6, 2001, and at Woodhull Medical and Mental Health Center on March 9, 2003. On March 10, the police say, he fatally shot Albert Kotlyar, who was working the night shift at the Laundry King Superstore in Bedford-Stuyvesant, because he felt that the man had disrespected him.

People who know Mr. Price, who has a record of arrests for burglary, robbery and assault going back to 1989, said that his inability to support his children was a source of pain and embarrassment for him, but that he did not talk about his problems.

''Maybe whatever demons that were in his head, making him kill, maybe he tried to get away from them by turning himself in,'' said Prince Cooper, 27, who said he had grown up in Crown Heights with Mr. Price. ''Maybe that way he knew he could get help.''